~ Things I like that don't ṣůcƙ.

Meatloaf and Mashed Potatoes

Alright, so I’m not back from Denver yet and I am not done with my writing but I did practice some procrastination in the form of cooking this afternoon.

S and I had been watching Nigella Lawson’s new program, Nigellissima, and she has a recipe for Meatzza, which is essentially an italian meatloaf, formed into a disk and topped with sauce and cheese. Intriguing, yes. Somehow, though it wasn’t quite right. It looks pretty yummy but I figure, if you’re going to do meatloaf, you should do meatloaf, right? So we set it aside and didn’t really think of it again.

Until this month’s food magazines turned up. In the very back of this month’s Olive, there is a recipe from Michael Ruhlman’s book, Twenty. It’s for meatloaf. I turned the corner on the page and went back to watching Saturday Kitchen Live, like I do.

I was running errands this afternoon and they included a run to Tesco to get lunch and assorted other things and that’s when I thought I’d pick up the ingredients and make it for supper. It’s not your normal “slap everything into a bowl, mix it up and chuck it in the oven” kind of recipe; he advocates grinding your own meat and offers up a recipe for chipotle ketchup to spread over the top. It even has a water bath. I was hooked.

I made the ketchup. I fried off the onions and deglazed the pan with red wine. I put them, and more wine in the freezer to make them icy. I toasted a baguette and made bread crumbs from it. Then, moving quickly, I combined everything, put it in a loaf pan in a water bath and stepped away from the oven. An hour and a half later, we had the most amazing meatloaf. It’s important to keep all the ingredients cold and to cook it in the water bath – normally a big chafe, but so worth it – because it comes out tender and juicy. When I pulled it out of the oven it smelled like France from all the red wine in it.

I’ll post a link to the recipe once it’s online. For the moment, you can find it in the current issue of Olive or in the book itself.